


How the Light Gets In

by Intergalactic_Asher



Category: Incarceron Series - Catherine Fisher
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, I might write a sequel where it's not, I'm right about this, M/M, One-sided pining, Pining, Suicidal ideation in chaptor two, Trans Male Character, angsty nonsense, but it's fairly minor, mentions of human trafficking, trans Keiro, well i mean, you read the books you tell me if it's one-sided
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28364385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Intergalactic_Asher/pseuds/Intergalactic_Asher
Summary: me: I hate pining when there's no kissing at the endalso me: writes this monstrosityJust some vignettes from Keiro's perspective because NOBODY IN THESE BOOKS APPRECIATES MY BOY
Relationships: Finn/Keiro
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	1. There is a crack in everything

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't for Secret Sapphique but shoutouts to @rusted-paradise on tumblr for putting that together and inspiring me to reread these books!

It's Keiro who finds the boy. The Comitatus sent him here, told him it was a scouting mission. It's a load of shit, a meaningless expedition that won't return anything, that nobody expects to return anything. They won't send Keiro anywhere really dangerous or lucrative, not without an Oathbrother. Jormanric says it's to keep him from making off with any haul, or letting himself get killed, with nobody to tie him back to the fold. But Keiro knows the old Ket-head is scared. If the Comitatus saw what Keiro could really do, they'd know Jormanric's days were numbered.

Keiro nearly steps on the boy before he notices him. He's usually more attentive than this, but at the moment he's transfixed. Behind the boy, who's sprawled face-down on the ground as if he were dropped there, is an open door. A hallway leads off it, lit from above and the purest, cleanest white Keiro has ever seen. It smells like antiseptic, and for a moment all Keiro can think is perfect. He's heard of places like this, the wombs of Incarceron. Shining places where the Prison forms its children, organic and lovely and half-mad from the beauty of their birth. Keiro steps forward. He reaches-

He nearly trips over the body on the ground. He regains his balance, but the door is already closed.

The boy must be a Cellborn. Keiro flips him onto his back. He's breathing, shallow but steady. He's about Keiro's age,maybe a little younger, but he looks younger still from the smoothness of his skin. It's shockingly pure. Even Keiro's own skin, which he looks after with all the care he can manage, has its share of pocks and scars. But this boy is smooth and soft, with no calluses on his hands and no marks on his body besides a little wrist tattoo Keiro would have taken for a tribemark if the boy weren't cellborn. Keiro wants to hate him, this child of Incarceron with immeasurable beauty and no name, but he can't. He needs this boy, knows he needs him without knowing why, and for a moment the only thought in his head is how it would feel to be held by someone so perfect, to be seen by someone so favored.

Then he hears Amoz shout, and reality comes back to him. He'll need to be clever if he's going to keep this boy. Jormanric hates prisoners, eschews any extra mouths to feed. But the Cellborn boy has muscle, atrophied but wiry and clearly capable, with a couple good meals and a little work. And the Comitatus lost nearly ten slaves in the mines not too long ago. That will be Keiro's excuse for bringing this boy in. Then he'll only have to wait for the right moment.

~~

Jormanric nearly throws the boy's unconscious body to the dogs, but Keiro is lucky. The old Sapient Gildas sees the same thing in the boy that Keiro did, and scolds Jormanric for nearly throwing out the Cellborn he's been searching for all his life. Keiro remains silent, lets Gildas berate him along with the others. It's not safe yet to let on that he knows anything about the boy, to risk showing the inexplicable need he feels to keep him alive. Keiro maintains a cultivated aura of arrogance, but he's not above playing stupid if it means he'll get what he wants down the line.

The boy, when he wakes, calls himself Finn. Keiro watches from afar after he's brought in, testing the boy's ability against his imagination, making sure he lives up. Finn is weak at first, and quiet, but as the days pass he grows comfortable with his work. He's good at what he does, and he follows orders without question. But what makes Keiro certain that he was right is the hard glint in Finn's eyes when Jormanric barks a directive at him. Finn is willing to play along, it seems, but he's got the same sense Keiro does: that he's better than this, that he's made for more. That he's waiting for the opportunity to be more. And Keiro is more than happy to serve as that opportunity.

~~

When they take the Oath, Keiro can feel Finn's blood pumping in his veins. It feels like his heart is on fire.

~~

Finn earns a reputation quickly. Part of that is Keiro's doing - he pushes the both of them from the start, getting them the most dangerous roles, finding the most profitable missions. They need their names known, and Finn needs to understand what it means to be Comitatus. Thanks to Keiro's insistence, and the secret training sessions he thrusts on Finn in the middle of the night, they work their way up quickly. But much of Finn's reputation is self-made.

The first time Finn has a fit, Keiro is terrified. He holds Finn down, heart racing, one of Keiro's own shirts stuffed in Finn's mouth to make sure he doesn't bite his tongue off. Keiro wonders if this is the end of his Oathbrother. Maybe Incarceron has decided to take its creation back, that Keiro can't have him anymore. In the long hours between Finn's body calming down, and him waking up, Keiro frets to himself that this will ruin them both. Any abnormality is a weakness, and if people learn about it, they might cast a more suspicious eye on the pair. Keiro keeps himself hidden, keeps himself safe, by putting himself above the scrutiny of others. If Finn brings him under that gaze, it can only be so long before one of his secrets is found out. As Keiro lies in Finn's bed next to him, their arms brushing so that if Finn begins to convulse again Keiro will feel it, his anxious thoughts swirl and linger and threaten to drag him into a panic.

But when Finn wakes, he speaks of the stars, and Gildas backs him in front of the Comitatus. Keiro throws himself wholeheartedly behind Finn, relieved and slightly in awe. Finn is Incarceron's son, the Prison's chosen, and a condition that would be unforgivable in anyone else only makes him more mystical. Keiro is glad that Finn hasn't doomed them both, and he's more than willing to capitalize on the Starseer's newfound fame. But some small, inexplicable piece of him can't help resenting it. He doesn't want Finn's reputation for himself - better to be seen as the brains behind the operation, the normal one who keeps the crazy mystic in check. No, Keiro isn't jealous of what Finn has - he just hates that everyone else wants a piece of it. The others don't deserve to see Incarceron speak to Finn, to see his eyes when he talks about the stars. It's Keiro who keeps Finn safe during his seizures, Keiro who never strays too far from his Oathbrother in case something sets one off. Finn at his craziest and most beautiful belongs to Keiro, and Keiro doesn't want to share.

~~

It doesn't take long to disabuse Keiro of the notion that he ought to show Finn where he came from. Finn thinks Keiro doesn't know about his nightmares, but it would be difficult not to wake up with all the tossing and turning that goes on in the other bed. The pristine cell, the white hallway - they were beautiful to Keiro, perfect even, but to Finn they've only ever spelled terror. Even if Keiro managed to find the door again, even if it opened, Finn might shatter on seeing it.

It's not that surprising, Keiro thinks. After all, it's the nature of sons to hate their fathers. Keiro's own father sold him off at the first opportunity. Keiro bowed his head and clenched his gloved hands and thought poisonous thoughts while his father haggled with Amoz over him. But it was a lucky break, really. Amoz separated his goods by gender, but he could barely count his own fingers, and even then Keiro knew where he belonged. Life as a Comitatus boy would mean hard labor, maybe deadly- but if he survived, there was a future for him. A bad haircut was a small price to pay, and a swift kick to the first boy who dared question him meant none of them would squeal. If Amoz wondered why his haul seemed less evenly split, he chalked it up to drink and poor memory.

Keiro barely waits a week after taking the Oath before he suggests a raid on his old settlement. He doesn't remember his father well enough to know if he's among the slain, but as he makes his way between the small hovels, Finn by his side, taking anything that's worth having and destroying anything that isn't, he feels something almost like justice.

~~

Keiro knows that Finn doesn't trust him. Not fully anyway, not the way Oathbrothers are supposed to trust. He can't be too upset: it goes both ways, after all. Maybe Finn knows that. Maybe his stubborn belief that Keiro isn't all his is just a misinterpretation of exactly what secret Keiro is keeping. Maybe if Keiro came clean to Finn, told him everything, maybe then Finn would trust him back.

Keiro thinks about it, to his own surprise: really, truly considers revealing all of himself. But if Finn ratted him out, he'd be done. He wants to believe Finn won't, wants badly to have that much faith in Finn, in anyone. But he doesn't, and he's not sure he could bring himself to say anything even if he did. Keiro's body is armor and weapon and treasure all in one; to admit the ways it betrays him is unthinkable, even to himself. Even to Finn.

~~

Of course Finn rescues the Maestra. Of course he leaves the Wing. Of course he takes the dog-slave. Of course Keiro follows him.

~~

Not a one of them believes in him. Not Gildas, and certainly not the girl, Attia. Keiro wasn't exactly popular among the Comitatus, but she hates him with a vitriol and a disdain that he hasn't felt in years. Keiro overhears her talking about how he'll take the Key and leave, as if Keiro has any desire to be on his own in the wilderness with just some stupid crystal to keep him alive. If Keiro was going to abandon Finn, he would have done it after defeating Jormanric, when he had everything, when he could become the lonely Winglord Gildas accused him of wanting to be. Instead he's out here in god knows where, and Keiro may be reckless, but he's not stupid. Even if he weren't Finn's Oathbrother, the only way to survive out here is to stick with the others. They must think he cares more about riches than survival, though, because they still won't believe he's sticking around.

It doesn't matter. Finn is the only person whose trust he needs, and that's bound to him by sacred ritual. And though everyone else seems to have forgotten, Keiro is bound to Finn as well. Growing up an orphan child of the Comitatus, Scum among the Scum, Keiro had known the Oath was the only thing that mattered. Oathbrothers had each other's backs no matter what. They cared for each other to the death, to killing, to the end of the world. Nobody had ever cared for Keiro like that. He dreamed of it as a child, having someone he could trust, who could trust him. None of the other orphan Scum wanted him. It didn't matter; he didn't want any of them either. But when he found Finn, he knew. 

When Finn's faith waivers now, in the face of Attia's or Gildas's accusations, it cuts through Keiro like a knife. Every suspicious glance, every moment of hesitation is a laceration, and sometimes even Keiro wonders how much scar tissue is too much, when he'll stop caring. He won't, though. Even if it's just to prove them all wrong.

~~

It's not Sapphique Finn has been talking to, but someone named Claudia. She says she's Outside, and she won't talk to anyone but Finn. Keiro wonders if Finn knew that when he said so, or if he was bluffing to make sure Keiro didn't ditch him. Keiro decides to believe the former, though it still smarts a little that Finn wouldn't tell him the truth. He can tell Attia is hurt too, and he wonders if she dislikes that Finn was hiding another girl. Keiro doesn't care, he thinks, as he slithers toward the Dragon's lair. For all Finn's bravado, all his apparent honor and compassion, he still lives in Incarceron. And in Incarceron, everyone is disposable. Not Keiro, though. Keiro is Finn's Oathbrother. He's got nothing to worry about.

~~

He's going to kill that Sapient, Blaize. He's got no right to live in this horrible tower, thinking so high and mighty of himself with all Keiro's secrets stored up like jam in a larder. Keiro hates him. Keiro's going to kill him. Keiro's going to rip his eyeballs out and make them watch as Keiro beats the rest of his body to a pulp.

It was pure luck that Finn and Attia walked in on Gildas before he decided to look through all of their histories, and luckier still that Keiro arrived soon after. He ran for the bookshelves, hoping he sounded vain and excited, feeling nothing but panic. If he got there first, maybe he could keep the others away.

It had all been there, just like he feared it would be: pictures of his naked body; a close-up of that one awful fingernail. But what Keiro wasn't prepared for were all the pictures of Finn. Keiro has always made a habit of staying close to his Oathbrother, especially after the first couple of fits, but in the book there's hardly a photograph without him. Does the Prison really love Finn that much? Is it so enamored with him that it would put him in the center of everything, even in its records of someone else?

Or is it that Keiro-

He's not going to finish that thought. Not now, not ever. What he's going to do is find that ship and get them all out of this horrible place. And then he's going to pluck Blaize's toenails out one by one and forge them into the knife that kills him. That'll show him.

~~

Keiro's not some old crackpot, he believes Outside exists. And who knows, maybe Sapphique really existed as well. But the thought of seeing Outside was never truly real to him. Not after the Key, not after the Beast, not even after Blaize. But once they crash into the Wall at the End of the World, Keiro's forced to admit it might be possible. Gildas has a mad gleam in his eye now, and Finn, already a hopeful fool, is so full of wonder and optimism it makes his usual self look downright cynical. Keiro lets himself dream, just for a moment, of the colorful, open world Finn is always going on about. Grass in a warm night, a real sky above him, Finn sprawled next to him. Keiro wants it. He hasn't dared want anything since leaving the Comitatus, except Blaize's head and for Attia to stop glaring daggers at him, but he wants this. He wonders how Finn might look, illuminated by stars.

And then the Prison reminds him who's really in charge.

He stops imagining after that, stops wanting, stops thinking. He's a caged, wild animal and he needs out of here, now. He remembers flashes of moments: the Prisonquake; the fight over the Key; shoving Jormanric's ring onto Gildas's finger even though he knows it won't save him, won't work for Keiro the way it worked for Attia. For Finn.

~~

All Keiro's dreams have never been enough, not for Incarceron or for his Oathbrother. He realizes now, sitting in the dark at the End of the World, that Outside has always been real, and Finn was always going to go there. Incarceron gave him dreams of the stars, and it wasn't just permission, it was a mandate. Maybe Incarceron believed that Finn would come back, keep the promise Sapphique had broken. Maybe it just loved him enough to let him go.

It's a fool either way. Incarceron and Keiro both, and Attia as well, all fools over Finn Starseer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic and chapter titles from Anthem by Leonard Cohen.


	2. Forget your perfect offering

Keiro doesn't remember much of his mother. He doesn't know if she's alive now, or if she was when he was sold. He doesn't remember her face or voice or whether she loved him. But there's a story she told him once, one he remembers even now. A man's sweetheart was lost to the depths of Incarceron, the story went. He was lonely and distraught, so he lit a sacred fire and prayed all night for the Prison to bring her back. But the darkness lasted for eight days and nights, and he didn't have enough oil, so he had to beg an old woman to lend him some. The woman said she'd help him if he led her back to his fire, but he couldn't turn around and look at her as they walked. She walked behind him and sang a song so beautiful it quelled the Prison, and none of its creatures attacked them. But the man was sure the voice he heard didn't belong to the old woman, but to his own lost love. When he couldn't bear it any longer, he turned around. He saw that the woman behind him was no old crone but his sweetheart in disguise. But when their eyes met, she paused in her song, and in that instant the prison's anger swelled, and it sent a rockfall that crushed them both.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful," Keiro's mother had said, looking wistful,"to be loved so dearly that your man would give up his life just to look at you?"

Keiro remembers thinking it would be more wonderful to have a man who watched the road and kept you both alive. He doesn't know much of lovers, he reflects now, but Finn certainly knows how to keep his eyes on the prize.

~~

It's a long climb out from the End of the World. This place behind the walls is a warren, twisting and featureless, and Keiro wonders if there actually is a way out from here at all. Incarceron could just as easily keep him lost here until he starves. He keeps going anyway. If he's going to die here he may as well make it quick, and besides, the exercise keeps him from thinking too much

He goes up, whenever he can. Sometimes it's a gentle slope, other times a harrowing climb up a shaft so narrow he can't stretch his arms out fully to either side. Eventually the tunnels level off - no further up to go. Keiro comes to a wooden door in the ground. Opening it, he sees he's about ten feet above a stone transitway, wide and bustling. He sighs, wishing for rope, then calls to look out below as he jumps down. A man carrying a canvas sack just manages to get out of his way. Keiro lands hard on his feet, his knees twinging painfully as they take most of the shock, but he stands up and brushes himself off as if it were nothing.

The transitway is a bridge connecting two cities, each atop a magnificent stone pillar stretching up from the floor, too far below to see. There are five of these total, and they're called the Pillars of the Sky. They could be the Pillars of Dirt for all Keiro cares, but one of them has an inn, and Keiro still has a few coins on him. Fully fed for the first time in days and lying in a real bed for once, Keiro sleeps like the dead. When he wakes up, he posts up in the transitway with a view of the trapdoor, still hanging open above.

With nothing to do but wait, the thoughts he previously kept at bay with exertion start to creep back in. Thoughts of Gildas, of the Prison's ugly voice, of that Princess's scorn. And of course, of Finn. Keiro wonders what his Oathbrother has seen Out there, if the kingdom he must rule by now makes him happy. He wonders if Finn still has fits and, stupidly, if there's anybody to keep him safe when he does. Keiro tells himself to shut up. Finn must have servants upon servants by now; with so many simpering staff at his disposal, the seizures must hardly even be an inconvenience.

The thoughts are acid. Keiro imagines them boiling through his body, dissolving his muscles, his bones. Corroding the metal inside of him until it washes away like silt in a stream. There will be nothing left of him then, and Attia will think it's good riddance, and Finn will already have forgotten him, and the Comitatus won't ever speak his name. Only the Prison will remember him, in that ugly book in the Warden's tower.

If Attia doesn't show up, he decides, he'll go back to the tower and burn it. Then he can disappear from the world entirely, and maybe that will be something like freedom.

Keiro is starting to come around on oblivion when Attia shimmies out of the trapdoor, dropping into the transitway like she's been there all along. Keiro's not sure if he's annoyed or grateful for her presence as he slides the cool, arrogant mask back on.

~~

It's Attia who finds out about the Dark Enchanter. Keiro mocks her mercilessly for believing some sideshow attraction could help them, but eventually he's forced to admit they've got no other leads. The act is pretty good, but what's most promising is the old lady in the crowd. She's lived here her whole life, she says. She saw the ringleader come through once before, in her youth. It was a different act then, but he was the same. Hasn't aged a day, she tells them. She remembers feeling like there was a power behind the act. Same as now, she says. Maybe there really is something to it.

Spying on the troupe as they leave town, Keiro and Attia see the old woman sitting on the back of one of the wagons, laughing with a juggler. It doesn't exactly inspire confidence, but it does give them an idea.

~~

Attia being the one to take a job with the circus was the right call, but that doesn't mean Keiro likes it. Alone again, trailing far enough behind the troupe that they won't notice, his thoughts go sour, curling in on themselves with rot. He rips them out one by one, going for the roots, as if he could pull Finn out of his mind entirely. Every time he begins to think of Finn, or Claudia, or Gildas, he imagines tearing out a chunk of his brain and throwing it on the side of the road. It would splatter there, and what wasn't picked away by beetles would dry out and stick on the rock forever, the only testament to Finn's existence lying on the ground like bird shit.

He won't be able to get through the Dice on his own, so he'll have to stow away with the circus. He waits just outside the troupe's firelight, and then, just after lightson when they're about to leave, ducks under a wagon and suspends himself from the underside. It's a long journey, and his muscles spasm and threaten to give out. But he grips the wagon tight, putting weight on his right forefinger like the fucking masochist he is, and it's so much easier to hold himself up with that finger than with the rest of his body combined. 

Keiro can't keep the poison out of his mind then. Halfman, monster. He wonders if his mother knew what he was. His father sold him not long after figuring it out. The old man didn't even have the decency to kill his abomination of a child, choosing instead to make Keiro someone else's problem and make some money to boot. Keiro might have respected the plan, if it had been someone else's. He tries to take some satisfaction, remembering the day they raided his old settlement. His father wouldn't have recognized him, fully grown and a man, but maybe he had some kind of premonition, some sense that the monster-child he couldn't bear to raise was coming back to haunt him. Keiro hopes so. He hopes Finn is having the same premonition now.

He breaks himself free of his thoughts when the caravan comes to a halt. Listens closely to the way the Enchanter tricks the stupid Winglord who controls this place. He talks a lot. Attia must have learned something from that. Keiro's not going to cling under wagons and follow a stupid circus all the way through the Ice Wing. He certainly doesn't want any more time to himself to think. He'll come get Attia at the next opportunity.

~~

 _Having a body makes you vulnerable._ It's the only truth Keiro knows, the only truth he's ever known. He screams it at Incarceron like some defiance, cuts through the terrible puppet that speaks with the Prison's voice. He feels the strain in his arms as he hacks apart the doll's plastic torso, feels his lungs burning in the quiet after it's over. He feels beautiful and disgusting, strong and powerless, all the mind-twisting contradictions he works so diligently to ignore. Incarceron knows. It's always known. Incarceron is a constant presence, surrounding Keiro, creeping through his nerves. How much of him belongs to it?

If he put on the Glove, he could balance the scales. He'd know Incarceron too, then, all its fears and secret hopes. Give it a taste of its own fucking medicine. Attia would probably murder him if he tried. She thinks he's playing into the Prison's hands. Maybe he is. There's a plan here, one that will get them both Out without giving Incarceron what it wants. He's sure he can find it. But when he tries to grasp it in his mind, all he finds is decay. He's rotting from the inside out, and if he doesn't put a stop to it soon they'll both be done for. _Having a body makes you vulnerable_. Keiro's body is used to Finn's, has learned to set its own patterns by Finn's habits. Now Finn is gone, and mould and infection are finding purchase in the space he left behind. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, Keiro thinks, if his heart were made of metal after all.

~~

Keiro's not a mystic. He's not a Sapient. He's not the hero of any great story that Prisoners will tell for generations to come. He's a footnote at best: that boy who followed Finn Starseer around for a while, maybe, or the idiot who brought Sapphique's Glove to whoever was going to do something great with it. Sometimes he wonders if he's something much worse, an aberration, a wrench in the workings of beings much greater than himself. He takes some pride in that.

That's how he feels when he asks Rix the question. The old magician is right: it should have been Attia. But Attia is frozen in fear, and something deep and desperate in Keiro moves him to ask it. It's that same hunger, that same strange drive he felt when he found Finn, like some great wheel is turning, and he can't _not_ ask it.

There's a moment, then, in the silence afterwards, when he can feel the Prison watching him. Feel Rix watching him. Feel Attia, not watching, but listening. All the attention is on Keiro, and it feels _fucking fantastic_ after a lifetime of fighting for scraps. He wonders if this is how Finn feels all the time, like destiny is more than a word, like he's got a place and a purpose beyond fighting to the next lightson.

He wonders if Finn would ever look at him like that, like he meant something.

He didn't dare hope he'd ever find out. But he's going to give it his best shot, and that means it's time to get moving.

~~

Incarceron's body is beautiful, and Keiro hates it with everything in him. It's wire and plastic, the apotheosis of Halfmen, androgynous and awe-inspiring and monstrous. Keiro wants to burn it. He wants to hack it apart with his bare hands. Nothing made of the Prison should be this beautiful.

Finn is made of the Prison, comes the thought, unbidden. It's true in the most technical sense. If Finn is a Cellborn - or if he's not, but his mind was shaped by those stark white hallways anyway - then he was made by Incarceron, shaped of components it was holding in stock. Just like this horrible statue. Just like Keiro. But it's different. Finn is flesh and blood. He's real. It's _different._

But when Keiro (metal bits and all) gets himself Out from the gaze of that awful thing, he wonders if organic muscles are what makes Finn real after all. Everyone Outside is made of skin, but Keiro can tell in an instant that they're bluffing. All of them, even the Sapient. They'll point their big guns, maybe even kill each other a bit - but none of them really believe it. One way or another, they're expecting all the trouble to be over soon, and then they can go back to their pretty lives (and, credit where it's due, it is very pretty). What does it matter if they're risking death, when they've never fought to survive?

Keiro goes overboard with the Princeling. Maybe it isn't necessary for this war he's found himself in the middle of; maybe he's only egging things on. But he needs to, for his own sake. He's pushing Finn on purpose, as if he could bring Finn back by force to who he his - who he really is, not some half-remembered daydream of a life, but who he fought every day against Civicry and Scum and his own brain to be. Finn hated this part of the Comitatus, the overt displays of power, the overdramatic performance of ruthlessness. He struggled against it, sometimes violently, sometimes against Keiro. But he doesn't do that, now. He barely calls Keiro out on it, and when he does, he just looks annoyed. Keiro catches that same look in him that he saw in the others - the one that asked when this would all be over so he could go back to having tea. Keiro's never felt so betrayed, not even when Finn left without him.

He's going to take a bath. He's going to take a bath and put on some stupidly foppish clothes and maybe later he'll get Finn's blood all over them.

~~

It doesn't matter what the others think, Not Claudia or Attia, or even Gildas or that baby Sapient, because Keiro has always known he'd die for Finn.

He's very nearly too late, and that's what saves him. In the moment between shoving Finn's body away, and Keiro's body careening after him, the bullet grazes his palm, and Keiro goes sprawling, alive and reeling with shockingly human pain, onto the floor of Claudia's beautiful sitting room.

He loses track of himself in the adrenaline rush, and when he comes back, Finn is hovering over him, terrified and beautiful. That mask of polite detachment that everyone wears Out here has fallen away, and Finn's face is back, full of wild emotion all pointed in Keiro's direction. Keiro knows, in that moment, that whatever happened in the Prison, whatever happened when he asked the question, all the scraps of attention and glory and fame he's fought so hard to collect don't matter, because the only eyes he's ever wanted on him are Finn's. He'd stay in this spot forever, ignore the pain, the bleeding, bare his entire soul if it only meant Finn would keep _looking_ at him.

It hurts, he tells his Oathbrother, nearly breaking apart with laughter. And that means it's real.

~~

The castle falls to dust. The Sapient becomes a god. The world Keiro knows and the world that he doesn't both crumble, and he stands on the roof of the ruined mansion and watches the stars.

~~

Keiro doesn't remember how they get back to the ground, but he remembers Attia steadying his shoulder, Claudia testing a foothold, Finn holding him steady when he lands. The four of them huddle together beneath the open sky and wait for daylight. Escaped Prisoners, all of them; inheritors of a ruined land and maybe, just maybe, the architects of what will come after.

The Sapienti must have thought the same thing once, when they built the Prison. And Finn's, or Prince Giles's, or whoever's great-grand-whatsit that decided to make a pretend kingdom. In the wake of whatever world's end they'd seen, they'd tried to make paradise, to capture perfection.

But perfection won't do, Keiro thinks, gazing at Finn in the starlight. He thought Finn was perfect, once. Wanted him to be, needed him to be. And he wanted Finn to think the same of him. But Finn has never really been the shining, innocent Cellborn that lived in Keiro's mind. He's a survivor; he's self-centered; his cruelty is rare, but it runs deep. He's willing to throw out old identities - including the one Keiro knew so well - to find the one he wants. Keiro hates him for it, and loves him even more.

Whatever they make now - and Keiro decides, then and there, that they will be the ones to make it - it will be like them. Broken and imperfect and detestable and beautiful, with enough holes for the stars to shine through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, we remember the Hebrews' forty-year journey through the desert by sleeping outside in temporary structures. The tent, or sukkah, must have three walls and a roof; but the fourth wall must be open, so a weary stranger can come in; and the roof must be imperfect, so that we can see the sky through it.
> 
> Fic and chapter titles from Anthem by Leonard Cohen

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title and chapter titles from Anthem by Leonard Cohen


End file.
